Application of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting in Powering Radio Frequency (RF) Module

Abstract

A radio frequency (RF) transmitter node powered with a cantilever based piezoelectric energy harvester is presented in this paper for wireless sensing applications. The piezoelectric cantilever (energy harvester) is tuned to its resonant frequency at around 290Hz, generates electrical output power from 29.5μW up to 0.57mW when driven with vibration excitation of acceleration levels of 0.01g and 0.019g respectively at resonance with external electrical load of 80kΩ. A shaker was used as a vibration source for the piezoelectric cantilever to simulate the vibration energy that can be found at many of household as well as industry appliances. An interface/power conditioning circuit with energy storage is used to accumulate the electrical energy generated from piezoelectric and then supply to power the RF transmitter node to transmit a chunks of data varies from 1 up to 10 Bytes at a certain times generated via a MCU to an RF receiving node at about 2.5m apart. The RF transmitter module was turning on for around 47 up to 102ms for each time transmitting 1 up to 10 Bytes respectively and then will be deactivated for a certain time varies from (2.5, 5, 7, and 10) seconds